


Scaenae Frons

by EchoDoctor



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, we all have emotions about this goat family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 10:11:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10851837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoDoctor/pseuds/EchoDoctor
Summary: Toriel's work is no less vital for being unseen.





	Scaenae Frons

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for you, Snapping turtle. You deserve all the happiness we can get you.

Her husband could have been an actor.

It’s not something Queen Toriel thinks about most days, because the time when he could have been an actor is long behind them all now, and there is always plenty of work that needs doing today, leaving the last month as far behind them as the last century. Time is a demanding director and will not change the script for any star, no matter how brightly burning.

But something about seeing him address his subjects, standing by his side as he leans forward on the edge of the podium, always brings back old memories. She had met him there in the theater, a prince born to real gold gleaming on every surface and precious jewels always close to hand, leaning forward on the edge of his seat to watch performers dressed in painted tin and colored glass as they walked to their places on the scarred old wooden stage and built the world up even better and bigger than the real thing. He’d dressed in old clothes and played the part of an ordinary peasant boy so badly it wouldn’t have fooled a child- hadn’t fooled a child, because they’d both still been children then for all they thought themselves so grown-up, and she had him spotted from the start.

She’d been nice enough not to tell on him, if he promised to share his treats. 

It was where she fell in love with him, curled up so close together in one cheap seat that she could feel his heartbeat, sharing roasted chestnuts and another wonderful story, spun out just for them. No matter how many other people were in the audience, it was always just for them. Children are like that.

Or at least… many of them are. This is one of the many things that worries Toriel about the newest addition to her family, the child that she wishes could have come to them sooner, because bitter old Time keeping even one more minute of their life away from her seems unthinkable now.

Most children are natural-born stars, bright and beautiful. They know, with all the perfect assurance of innocence, that the world does revolve around them, and that it obviously should. Even the shyer ones are the quiet centers of their own orbits, breathing life into their daydream worlds and clever dreams, all Creation their own in the space of a single thought. So they walk carelessly and reach out eagerly, up again in moments every time they stumble. They have to remind themselves to ask permission to take and to hold, because their first instinct is that everything is there for them already, each new delight meant for them alone.

Chara’s movements are less an actor’s and more a dancer’s, cautious and precise. They hold themselves in, with as much control as they can muster, and consider every single step before they make it. They do not allow themselves the loose-limbed luxury of stomping and sprawling around the house, the way their brother does. On the rare occasions they do put a toe wrong, tripping to the ground or knocking something over, there always follows a long, strained moment of perfect stillness, eyes wide and breath held as they wait for something that never seems to come.

Perhaps they were clumsier, once, in the beginning of that strange hidden time where she did not know them. An awkward child, forever stumbling into things, who stubbornly trained themselves to be smooth-stepped and sharp to overcome their initial flaws. It might explain how someone so graceful has so many old scars, all little white lines crisscrossing here and there, which they seem so embarrassed to have anyone discover.

Perhaps not, also. 

(Embarrassment is a kinder word than terror. Toriel believes in kindness where you can make it, especially here, for a tired and hopeful people, for a growing green and golden child willing to smile for everyone but themself.)

Where most children act as though they stand in their own spotlight, every action marked out for their obvious importance, Chara acts as though it is a searchlight instead, there for them to be dragged out of hiding and hunted down. They hold themself to higher standards than Asgore did at their age, and where he was royal-born they came to them nameless. Never a hair out of place if they can help it, never a moment unguarded.

Those moments when they do allow a scrap of vulnerability, the softening of a smile or the most brief and gentle touch, are all the more precious for their rarity. She does not ever dare point these things out in the moments themselves for fear of shattering them, the way a story’s spell is shattered when an actor forgets their lines, or someone in the audience forgets themselves and speaks out too loudly. 

Most people would not notice either the swift softer moments or the more common lack of them. Chara might have been a playwright themselves, in another time, always doing their best to position things just so- look at the sharp smile, not the shaking hands. See the smooth face and calm expression, not the short height and slim shoulders, too young for the burden they already carried. Believe what I show you, not what you know, because your belief runs the show and I need the show to go on, to keep body and soul together. 

Toriel is not most people, any more than Chara is most children. Where the king-to-be of the Underground had always loved the shining stage, memorizing all the best lines so he could recite them later in front of the mirror at home, swishing his robes and posing dramatically, its’ future queen had been more fascinated by the rarely-glimpsed inner workings of the show, all the backstage secrets that you only ever saw when they went wrong. 

Toriel wishes very much that they had come to their home sooner. She would go to her knees in the rivers of Waterfall and wish it to every shining star and stone in the night-marked roof of their world if she thought they could make it so.

(But again: time does not listen, even to stars. And queens in prayer stand even lower.)

It’s the things she notices that keep the show running smoothly, for all they stand on a bigger stage now. She had begged and bargained her way backstage in the old days, running on wide-eyed sweetness and the goodwill of the cast and crew. There she’d learned how paint and powder could be a hundred heroes’ faces, and a light pointed in just the right way could be saving grace. The world was woven ropes and pulleys, each piece connected to each other like a cloth more complicated than anything she could knit with wool and needles, and you could reshape it all as you chose if only you knew when and where to plant your feet and haul.

Where Asgore had learned to coax flowers from the dirt, she’d learned how make a weight for the scales from bags of sand. And when they had both seen a traveling magician take the stage to pull out feathers and fire, he had loved the shimmering heart of the flame, while she had been thrilled to realize she could see how the smoke hid all the thin wires, letting simple magic tricks show them things even magic itself could not truly do. 

It had not been training enough for what they did now, but nothing could have really prepared them for the War but war itself in any case. Battles were things that happened onstage, with blunt swords and victors who aimed carefully to thrust the blade in between the arm and ribs, so their victim could hold it there tucked under their armpit long enough for their perfectly-chosen last words. 

He should have had more time for plays, and for playing, to put his precious collection of carefully painted props and sparkling masks to good use, to soliloquize in the booming bellow he had only just grown into. That instead of taking bows at curtain calls he would be calling fire down on the enemy, that she would go from their marriage bed to the battlefield to claim the roles of queen and general both in one frantic night, that the two of them would sit on sunless thrones and learn how much heavier the gold of real crowns were than any painted prop…

If anyone had told them, neither of them would have believed it. Even if you loved to spend your days weaving stronger stories, some things were just too heavy with strangeness to suspend disbelief. 

A small handful of those old props had survived the War, tossed hastily in a chest as people packed anything they could grab for the journey down into the mountain. By mutual agreement, neither King nor Queen wanted to keep them. She had quietly donated them, along with a decent amount of gold, to one of the small schools that had sprung up in the capital, with the suggestion that it be used to support their fledgling drama department. 

She hadn’t seen them again until an official visit years later, peeking curiously through the small window into one of the first-year art classrooms and seeing a little ghost laugh and twirl around in the very sparkliest mask and matching cape from the whole collection, while a shyer specter applauded them adoringly. It hadn’t seemed right, somehow, to let them know she had been watching, so she walked on without a word. But some odd tension in her chest had seemed to ease for the rest of the day, as though the sight of them had untied a knot she hadn’t known she was tangled in. 

It was likely the same impulse that had driven her and Asgore to try and give Asriel as normal and unburdened a childhood as they could, under the circumstances. He would carry a heavy weight in the future, and time was pulling him closer to it every moment, but they could at least give him some breathing room for now. Time would never slow down for him, but it wouldn’t steal from him, either. It went at a measured pace, and so they should be able to take him by the hand and measure out some peace.  
The question of how to do the same for his sibling, who didn’t seem to know how to ever put their burdens down in the first place, was still an unsolved puzzle, but she did what little she could for now.

Present them to the people, yes, because they’d need to know who to follow someday. But beyond that, let them play in the garden and crown themselves with flowers. Gold circlets were much heavier than green, and they ought to have the chance to get a little taller before that weight started pushing them down. 

Asgore smiled and gestured expansively, moving on to the last portion of his speech. To her left, Asriel shifted restlessly, while Chara very pointedly did not move at all. They were so rigidly still it was hard to tell that they were even breathing.

While her husband had written the speech, she had been the one to arrange the construction of the stage and their precise positions on it. The King of Monsters at the podium, front and center to be the pillar of strength their people needed. The Royal Scientist at his left hand, the Queen at his right, and the children standing in between the royal couple- a show of strength, yes, but strength in gentleness, showing their great knowledge and wisdom, their promising future and all the loving gentleness that guarded it. And the Guard themselves stood on the step below, with Gerson positioned carefully standing just in front of Chara.

Showing his unguarded back to a human.

This was the message as much as anything outright spoken: see how the old pains fall away for new life, new hopes. We trust them with our hopes and we guard them with our lives. The Hammer of Justice does not fall on this child for the crimes of their people, and our people will not forever be their enemies.  
We have seen the darkness, and now we know. This future will be bright. 

They would not, of course, mention this directly. What monster would want to admit to being frightened of a child? No matter the fear they still carried on down the years from what older and colder humans had done to them, no one could look at such a fragile young life and fail to feel guilty for their unease. Sometimes an unspoken message was a kinder one- someone trying their hardest to be strong might not want to be reassured, lest they realized that you had noticed their discomfort.

As a royal, Chara might very well be a bit too well-matched to their subjects, both parties trying to hide their struggles for the other’s sake. 

She reached over with one hand to discreetly give her little prince a gentle pat on the shoulder, wordlessly telling him that he’d been very good, and that the speech would be done soon. As she drew her hand back, it was of course unavoidable that the very long, trailing sleeve of her formal robes would brush across Chara’s back, a light whisper of silk against their shoulder blades.

Nothing so obvious as a reassurance, nothing that couldn’t be denied or ignored if they needed to, but something tangible all the same. Still a point of contact, a steady place to stand.

She kept looking ahead and they said nothing, but ever so faintly she could hear Chara shift their weight into a slightly more comfortable position beside her, and start to breathe more deeply.

**Author's Note:**

> So the title comes from... eh, fuck it, I'll just let Wikipedia explain this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaenae_frons
> 
> (That feel when you're too lazy to even explain your own pretentious theater-themed title.)


End file.
